It is with great sadness that the AA has learned that Eldred Evans, an architect and teacher who was acknowledged throughout the profession as one of its most talented and original practitioners, has died aged 85. As well as being a shining student and inspiring teacher at the AA, Eldred served as a member of the AA Council in 1967–68, and we were delighted that she reconnected with the school during the AA XX 100 celebrations in 2017. We are truly grateful for all the time and support that Eldred gave to the AA, and extend our deepest condolences to her family. Her daughter, Elantha Evans, has kindly provided the following tribute:

“Eldred was widely acknowledged at the AA, and later at Yale, as a ‘student of great maturity and easily the brightest in her class’. This perception of her talent was confirmed the following year when she, a 23-year-old student, won the national competition to build a new Lincoln Civic Centre with her AA thesis project. Sadly, the project did not go ahead but the win allowed her to set up her own office, work on competitions and teach at the AA and at what was then the Regent Street Polytechnic (now the University of Westminster).

Together with her partner in life and work, David Shalev (1934–2018), she produced a body of work that was uniformly innovative and elegant. Over six decades, Eldred and David produced innovative designs for every building type, from the individual house to a city for two million inhabitants on the Solent. Their unaltered buildings which can be visited include the Tate St Ives, Truro Courts of Justice, Jesus College Cambridge library and student accommodation and Bede’s World museum in Northumberland. All of their projects are illustrated in their monograph Evans + Shalev (2020) which is available in the AA Bookshop, along with Eldred’s book of her Miniature Watercolours (2020).”

Watch an interview with Eldred Evans conducted as part of the AA XX 100 celebrations here, and view her work within the AA Collections.